IT ISSUE · IDENTITY AND ACCESS
Account locked
Something, often an old phone or a saved login, keeps trying an old password and locking the account.A lockout is a count, not a verdict. Something is presenting the wrong password often enough to trip a threshold, and it is usually not the person trying to sign in. It is a device signing in on their behalf, quietly, on a schedule.
What you may notice
- The account locks again within minutes of being unlocked.
- It happens at the same time each day.
- The person hasn't typed a password all morning.
- A phone or tablet is set up with the account.
- A printer, scanner or application uses the account to send mail.
Find what is holding the old password
We review the account, the recent sign-in attempts and where they came from, which usually identifies the device or service still presenting an old credential.
Resetting the password again is the instinct and it makes things worse: the stored copy is still wrong, it retries, and the account locks on the new password instead of the old one. It is better to leave it locked for ten minutes while somebody finds the tablet in a drawer than to reset it four more times.
If the failed attempts are coming from somewhere nobody works, or from overseas, don't treat it as an old device. Treat it as someone trying to get in, and see the page on compromised accounts.